We Have Come to Worship Him

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the
days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem,
saying, 2 "Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we
saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him." 3 When
Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with
him. 4 Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the
people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5
They said to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been
written by the prophet: 6 'AND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH, ARE
BY NO MEANS LEAST AMONG THE LEADERS OF JUDAH; FOR OUT OF YOU SHALL
COME FORTH A RULER WHO WILL SHEPHERD MY PEOPLE ISRAEL."' 7 Then
Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact
time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem and said,
"Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found
Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him." 9 After
hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had
seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over
the place where the Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they
rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 After coming into the house
they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the
ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they
presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And
having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the
magi left for their own country by another way.

There are at least five truths that Matthew wants us to see in
this story about Christ and worship 1) Jesus is the Messiah, the
King of the Jews, and should be honored as such. 2) Jesus is to be
worshiped not just by Jews, but by all the nations of the world, as
represented by the wise men from the east. 3) God wields the
universe to make his Son known and worshiped. This is his great
goal in all things - that his Son be known and worshiped. 4) Jesus
is troubling to people who do not want to worship him and brings
out opposition for those who do. 5) Worshiping Jesus means joyfully
ascribing authority and dignity to Christ with sacrificial
gifts.

1. Jesus is the Messiah, the King of the Jews, and Should be
Honored as Such.

Verse 2 announces clearly whom this story is really about:
"Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?" It's about a
newborn child destined to be King of the Jews. Now, in itself that
would not be a very great thing. Somewhere alive in America today
there are probably three or four children or young people under the
age of 18 who are going to be President of the United States some
day. But nobody really cares about this, or sets out to find them
or honor them.

But verse 4 makes clear what the magi really mean by "King of
the Jews." It says, "Gathering together all the chief priests and
scribes of the people, [Herod] inquired of them where the Messiah
was to be born." Herod had been called "king of the Jews" by the
Senate in Rome for almost 40 years. But no one called him Messiah.
Messiah means the long-awaited God-anointed Ruler, who would
overcome all other rule, and bring in the end of history, and
establish the kingdom of God and never die or lose his reign.

We don't know how the wise men got their information that there
was such a king coming. But it is clear that Herod got the message:
these fellows are not searching for a mere, ordinary, human
successor to me. They are searching for the final King, to end all
kings. And, of course, unlike Anna and Simeon in Luke 2, that is
the last thing Herod was looking for. He didn't even know the
simple Scriptures about where the Messiah was to be born.

So he asks the scribes, and the one text that they focus on is
Micah 5:2,6 "And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means
least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a
Ruler who will shepherd my people Israel." Now that doesn't sound
very extraordinary either. The reason is that the only purpose for
which the scribes quoted the text was to answer Herod's question:
Where? And the answer is Bethlehem.

But what if Herod had asked them, "Who?" They might have read on
in Micah 5: "(2) His goings forth are from long ago, from the days
of eternity. . . . (4) And He will arise and shepherd His flock in
the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD
His God. And they will remain, because at that time He will be
great to the ends of the earth." So this king is not just coming
into being in the womb of his mother Mary. "His goings forth are
from long ago, from the days of eternity." Or, as John's Gospel
says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God" (John 1:1). And this king would not be
limited in his realm to Israel. "He will be great to the ends of
the earth."

That's the first truth and this is why worship is on their mind!
And it leads us to the second truth in this text about the
Messiah.

2. Jesus is to be Worshiped not just by Jews, but by all the
Nations of the World, as Represented by the Wise Men from the
East.

Notice that Matthew does not tell us about the shepherds coming
to visit Jesus in the stable. His focus is immediately on
foreigners coming from the east to worship Jesus. Verse 1: "Now
after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the
king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is He
who has been born King of the Jews?'"

So Matthew's Gospel portrays Jesus at the beginning and ending
of his Gospel as a universal Messiah for the nations, not just for
Jews. Here the first worshipers are court magicians or astrologers
or wise men not from Israel but from the East - perhaps from
Babylon. They were gentiles. Unclean. And at the end of Matthew the
last words of Jesus are, "All authority has been given to Me in
heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the
nations."

This not only opened the door for us gentiles to rejoice in the
Messiah, it added proof that he was the Messiah. Because one of the
repeated prophecies was that the nations and kings would, in fact,
come to him as the ruler of the world. For example, Isaiah 60:3,
"Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of
your rising." So Matthew adds proof to the messiahship of Jesus and
shows that he is messiah - a King, and Promise-Fulfiller - for all
the nations, not just Israel. For us, not just Jews.

3. God Wields the Universe to Make his Son Known and Worshiped.
This is His Great Goal in all Things - that His Son be Known and
Worshiped.

Over and over the Bible baffles our curiosity about just how
certain things happened. How did this "star" get the magi from the
east to Jerusalem? It does not say that it led them or went before
them. It only says they saw a star in the east (verse 2), and came
to Jerusalem. And how did that star go before them in the little
five-mile walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem as verse 9 says it did?
And how did a star stand "over the place where the Child was"? The
answer is: We do not know. There are numerous efforts to explain it
in terms of conjunctions of planets or comets or supernovas or
miraculous lights. We just don't know. And I want to exhort you not
to become preoccupied with developing theories that are only
tentative in the end and have very little spiritual
significance.

I risk a generalization to warn you: people who are exercised
and preoccupied with such things as how the star worked and how the
Red Sea split and how the manna fell and how Jonah survived the
fish and how the moon turns to blood are generally people who have
what I call a mentality for the marginal. You do not see in them a
deep cherishing of the great central things of the gospel - the
holiness of God, the ugliness of sin, the helplessness of man, the
death of Christ, justification by faith alone, the sanctifying work
of the Spirit, the glory of Christ's return and the final judgment.
They always seem to be taking you down a sidetrack with a new
article or new tape or book. There is little centered
rejoicing.

But what is plain concerning this matter of the star is that it
is doing something that it cannot do on its own: it is guiding magi
to the Son of God to worship him. There is only one Person in
Biblical thinking that can be behind that intentionality in the
stars - God himself. So the lesson is plain: God is guiding
foreigners to Christ to worship him. And he is doing it by exerting
global - probably even universal - influence and power to get it
done. Luke shows God influencing the entire Roman Empire so that
the census comes at the exact time to get a virgin to Bethlehem to
fulfil prophecy with her delivery. Matthew shows God influencing
the stars in the sky to get foreign magi to Bethlehem so that they
can worship him.

This is God's design. He did it then. He is still doing it now.
His aim is that the nations - all the nations (Matthew 24:14) -
worship his Son. This is God's will for everybody in your office at
work, and in your neighborhood and in your home. As John 4:23 says,
"Such the Father seeks to worship him." At the beginning of Matthew
we still have a "come-see" pattern. But at the end the pattern is
"go-tell". The magi came and saw. We are to go and tell. But what
is not different is that the purpose of God is the ingathering of
the nations to worship his Son. The magnifying of Christ in the
white-hot worship of all
nations, the reason the world exists.

4. Jesus is Troubling to People Who do not Want to Worship Him
and He Brings out Opposition for those Who do.

This is probably not a main point in the mind of Matthew, but it
is inescapable as the story goes on. In this story there are two
kinds of people who do not want to worship Jesus, the Messiah. The
first kind is the people who simply do nothing about Jesus. He is a
nonentity in their lives. This group is represented by the chief
priests and scribes. Verse 4: "Gathering together all the chief
priests and scribes of the people, [Herod] inquired of them where
the Messiah was to be born." Well, they told him, and that was
that: back to business as usual. The sheer silence and inactivity
of the leaders is overwhelming in view of the magnitude of what was
happening. And notice, verse 3 says, "When Herod the king heard
this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." In other words,
the rumor was going around that someone thought the Messiah was
born. The inactivity on the part of chief priests is staggering -
why not go with the Magi? They are not interested. They do not want
to worship the true God.

The second kind of people who do not want to worship Jesus is
the kind who is deeply threatened by him. That is Herod in this
story. He is really afraid. So much so that he schemes and lies and
then commits mass murder just to get rid of Jesus.

So today these two kinds of opposition will come against Christ
and his worshipers. Indifference and hostility. Are you in one of
those groups? Let this Christmas be the time when you reconsider
the Messiah and ponder what it is to worship him.

So let me close with that, the fifth truth in this story. What
is worship in this text?

There are four pieces to that definition of worship, and all
four are grounded in this text.

First, I see the magi ascribing authority to Christ by calling
him "King of the Jews" in verse 2: "Where is He who has been born
King of the Jews?"

Second, I see the magi ascribing dignity to him by falling down
before him in verse 11: "After coming into the house they saw the
Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and
worshiped Him." Falling to the ground is what you do to say to
someone else: you are high and I am low. You have great dignity and
I am lowly by comparison.

Third, I see the joy in these ascriptions of authority and
dignity in verse 10: "When they saw the star, they rejoiced
exceedingly with great joy." Now this is a quadruple way of saying
they rejoiced. It would have been much to say they rejoiced. More
to say they rejoiced with joy. More to say they rejoiced with great
joy. And even more to say they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
And what was all this joy about? - they were on their way to the
Messiah. They were almost there. I cannot avoid the impression then
that true worship is not just ascribing authority and dignity to
Christ; it is doing this joyfully. It is doing it because you have
come to see something about Christ that is so desirable that being
near him to ascribe authority and dignity to him personally is
overwhelmingly compelling.

And the fourth part of the definition of worship here is that we
do our ascribing with sacrificial gifts. Worshiping Jesus means
joyfully ascribing authority and dignity to Christ with sacrificial
gifts.

Now we have learned in this series on worship that God is not
served by human hands as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25). So
the gifts of the magi are not given by way of assistance or
need-meeting. It would dishonor a monarch if foreign visitors came
with royal care-packages. Nor are these gifts meant to be bribes.
Deuteronomy 10:17 says that God takes no bribe. Well, what then do
they mean? How are they worship?

The gifts are intensifiers of desire for Christ himself in much
the same way that fasting is. When you give a gift to Christ like
this, it's a way of saying, "The joy that I pursue (verse 10!) is
not the hope of getting rich with things from you. I have not come
to you for your things, but for yourself. And this desire I now
intensify and demonstrate by giving up things, in the hope of
enjoying you more, not things. By giving to you what you do not
need, and what I might enjoy, I am saying more earnestly and more
authentically, 'You are my treasure, not these things.'" I think
that's what it means to worship God with gifts of gold and
frankincense and myrrh.

And so may God take the truth of this text and waken in us a
desire for Christ himself. May we say from the heart, "Lord Jesus
you are the Messiah, the King of Israel. All nations will come and
bow down before you. God wields the world to see that you are
worshiped. Therefore, whatever opposition I may find, I joyfully
ascribe authority and dignity to you, and bring my gifts to say
that you alone can satisfy my heart, not these."